


Mohs Scale

by Archaeopter-ace (QuarticMoose)



Series: Don't Listen to Kafka [3]
Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons)
Genre: Ageism, Eating Things That Should Not Be Eaten, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Skin Picking (Mentioned), Toby POV, Toby is a Good Bro, fatphobia (brief mention), nancy domzalski does not appear in this fic, this fic exists at the intersection of geology and cosmetology, though her presence is very much felt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27157279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuarticMoose/pseuds/Archaeopter-ace
Summary: Jim has a problem, and Toby is uniquely qualified to helpOr: The one where the boys bond over manicures
Relationships: Toby Domzalski & Jim Lake Jr., Toby Domzalski & Nancy Domzalski
Series: Don't Listen to Kafka [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1143062
Comments: 32
Kudos: 85





	Mohs Scale

**Author's Note:**

> Third in a series! Would probably help to read the other two first, but this one could conceivably stand on its own. It is a one-shot interlude before we pick up the main plot again in the next one.
> 
> Nancy is 83 and was not a spy during WWI - more explanation at the end. 
> 
> Ever since I moved in with my grandma several years ago I became a lot more aware of how elderly characters are made fun of in television. A major motivating factor for this one-shot was to address that ageism, and how it's affected Toby.

Toby came prepared.

He had his mineral collection, he had his mani-pedi bag; he even had snacks.

He went across the street and knocked on the door (it had been many years since he’d last knocked on the Lakes’ front door; an open door policy had been established between the two households around the same time that Toby and Jim were allowed to ride their bikes around the neighborhood unsupervised.)

But things were different now. He was no less certain of his welcome, that wasn’t it at all. No, he knocked because the sun was still up, and Jim’s skin was troll-enough now that it was a good idea for him to get well out of the way of any stray sunbeams that might slip past an open door.

So. Two knocks to give Jim warning, a brief pause to give him time to react, then push his way inside anyway because dammit that open door policy was _important_ and he didn’t want there to be any walls between him and Jim, metaphorically speaking.

Sure enough, Jim, standing well away from the door, grinned when he saw Toby. “Thanks for coming over!” The smile slipped off his face as his brow furrowed. “Are you sure it isn’t too much trouble? I’m sure I could figure something out – ”

Toby waved him off as best he could with his hands full. “Puh-leez, I want to help. Seriously, this is going to be great, and I think you might even have fun.”

Jim raised an eyebrow, and Toby allowed him his skepticism. After all, it wasn’t as though Toby had learned how to do pedicures for fun – that it _was_ just turned out to be an unexpected bonus.

Jim scratched the back of his neck anxiously. “So, where should we…?”

Toby looked around the room, assessing. He and Nana usually took care of her nails in her bedroom, where she had her second-best recliner.

“The couch will work,” Toby decided. “I’m gonna go raid your linen closet; you just sit right there and leave everything to me.”

Bemused, Jim blinked, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

Toby had no problem finding the aforementioned closet. He grabbed a couple of the softest hand towels he could find, and one big absorbent towel. He had to poke around the bathroom a bit to find a suitable basin (dammit, he should have thought to bring one from home), but find one he did, eventually.

Jim’s eyes went wide when he saw Toby coming down the stairs with his carefully balanced burden. “I thought we were going to just trim my nails? What’s all this for?”

“Jim. If we are going to do this, we are going to do this _right_. Prepare to be pampered!” He folded the large towel in half and spread it over the coffee table.

Jim looked uncertain, but he wasn’t running for the hills, so…

Toby went to the sink and adjusted the temperature until it was comfortably warm – then reconsidered what he knew about trolls, and allowed the water to heat up another degree or two. Carefully carrying the basin so it didn’t slosh, Toby returned and put it on top of the towel on the coffee table.

“So when I do this for Nana,” he began, suddenly and inexplicably self-conscious and unable to look Jim in the eye, “We soak her nails to soften them up, makes them easier to trim and less likely to tear. And while I don’t expect a good soak to do anything for troll-stone nails, it can’t hurt. It’s part of the _process_.”

Toby knew his living arrangements were unusual. Not unheard of, but… no one else at school lived with a grandparent, at least not that he knew of. Nana had raised him. She had been his mother-figure for as long as he could remember, taking care of him in all the ways a mom would. But there were nevertheless times when the differences between a forty-something mom and an eighty-three year old nana became impossible to ignore.

The fact that their bathroom was always stocked with adult diapers, denture glue, and bunion cream, for instance.

He knew being old was gross. Or, he thought he did. Everyone else thought so, at least. He always felt a hard pit in his stomach every time he laughed at a joke whose punchline boiled down to ‘and it was horrifying, because they were _old’_ \- but he still laughed. By the time he was eleven, Toby knew what people said about his nana behind her back whenever she put on a bathing suit. A lot of it was similar to what they said about him, to his _face_ (he’s been _trying_ so hard to manage his weight but nothing seems to work). But some of it was because her skin was wrinkly, and spotted from decades of sun exposure, and yes, because she was what some might call saggy. And it was apparently universally accepted that Old People shouldn’t be seen enjoying themselves in public. Especially not at public pools.

So yes, he knew his nana was old; it wasn’t something he could ignore. He just didn’t like to dwell on the implications of that. It was easier to complain about Nana’s poor eyesight, or to take advantage of it, than it was to think seriously about what it would mean if her eyesight got any worse, or she lost her hearing _completely_ , or got any one of the many, many ailments that were the conversational bread and butter of her monthly book club.

It was hard to think about Nana being _old_ when she was so lively, so free-spirited and independent. A lot of her self-esteem was tied up in being able to do things for herself. But there were still things that she literally could not do anymore. Like reach her own toes to take care of them herself.

They lived on a fixed income. They clipped coupons and pinched pennies, and when Toby was fourteen he offered to do her nails for her so she didn’t have to pay to have them done at a salon.

She had said that it wasn’t necessary, that he didn’t need to worry about these kinds of things. He had insisted that he _wanted_ to do it.

She still turned him down. It wasn’t his job to take care of her.

That Mother’s Day, his gift to her was to give her a ‘spa day’ at home. He pulled out all the stops – scented candles, bubble bath, tiny sandwiches, the works – and she hadn’t been able to refuse, not on Mother’s Day. 

His first attempts at giving a pedicure had been clumsy, but no blood was shed so he counted it as a win. And it was the turning point; he’d finally been able to convince her to let him do this for her on a regular basis. Because he wanted to. Because he loved her. Because she showed her love for him by caring for him, and it wasn’t fair that he hadn’t been allowed do the same.

He’s gotten better at doing nails with practice. Now he has a whole mani-pedi bag with all the accoutrements to make a proper Spa Day out of it, every time.

Toby shook himself free of his woolgathering. He unzipped the mani-pedi bag and took out his stash of foil-wrapped mani-pedi bath bombs. “I’ve got, let’s see, Lemon Balm, Eucalyptus, and something called ‘Awakening’ left.”

Jim raised a questioning brow.

“For the water,” Toby clarified. “It’s like aromatherapy. And then your hands smell nice. Here - ” he passed Jim the gumball-sized balls so he could judge for himself.

Jim studied each one carefully, and after much indecision selected Eucalyptus. It fizzed most satisfyingly when plopped in the water, and Toby nodded in approval as he continued to pull supplies out of his bag and arrange them on the table.

“Scented candles, yea or nay?” He weighed them in his hands, considering. “Too many smells? It’s probably too many smells, isn’t it. That’s okay, I have unscented in here somewhere.”

“It’s your process.” Jim demurred, still captivated by the bubbles.

Toby sighed. “Yes, but it’s _your_ spa day, to make you _comfy_.”

Jim reached out and picked up a lavender candle before Toby could put it away. He sniffed it, and got a weird look on his face, one Toby had seen before, which he had come to suspect meant ‘this smells like it could be edible even though I don’t think it should be.’ Toby finished putting away the scented candles and arranged three plain tea lights to be asymmetrically appealing before lighting them.

“Okay, we’ve got the hand bath, we’ve got the candles, now it’s time for the music. Now, I know showtunes are probably not what you think of when you think ‘full spa experience,’ but trust me on this; Nana and I have it down to a science.” Actually, trying to play prototypical ‘soothing spa relaxation music’ when it was just you and a family member was inherently jarring – you could never take it seriously, and sometimes that was amusing, but sometimes it just made things awkward. On the other hand, something upbeat, something with a story - _that_ could help distract from what an intimate thing it fundamentally was to wash someone else’s feet.

Because for Toby, pulling out all the stops to set up the ambiance and making a game out of it was his way of making it manageable emotionally, less overwhelming, and it helped soothe his Nana’s pride if it was all for fun, and not a necessary bit of care that she could not perform for herself.

He pulled up his Broadway albums on his phone, thumbing through the many choices. He paused over _Wicked_ – that should be fine if they skipped the opening number… though the Second Act was a maybe a bit fraught. He wanted Jim to feel comfortable – happy even – with his blue skin, not beat him over the head with parallels.

Better go with _Something Rotten_ \- Jim was sure to get a kick out of the omelette song. Honestly he was actually a bit curious about Jim's thoughts on the tap dance portion of the number, where they described step-by-step how to make an omelet, and whether he made his omelets a different way. There was even the Shakespeare angle to consider, that could help Jim with the play!

“Okay, quick rundown so you can follow along; Nick Bottom is a playwright trying to compete with Shakespeare, so he goes to an oracle to try to scoop him on his next big play. And that’s it, that’s all you really need to know; you’ll be able to pick up on the rest as it goes.” He pressed play. ‘Welcome to the Renaissance’ started to play, and Toby raised the volume so they could hear it easily.

“Now what?”

“Now, soak your hands before the water gets cold.”

Jim complied, humming happily as he submerged his still human-looking hands.

Toby hesitated; he knew that the glamour mask created a visual illusion only, that right now Jim’s hands were actually blue and trollish even if he couldn’t see it, and it would make no difference to the soaking process whether Jim wore the mask or not.

Still. Why put off the inevitable?

“If you want,” Toby began slowly, “I could get started on one hand? While the other soaks? Since soaking is actually unlikely to have a real impact on your nails?”

“Sure, go ahead.” Jim lifted one dripping hand out of the water; Toby carefully bundled it in one of the super-soft hand towels and began patting it dry.

Then he took a deep breath. “I’ll need to actually see your hand for this next bit, Jimbo.”

“What do you – oh. Right.”

Jim made no move to take off his mask. Toby continued to towel dry his already-dry hand, squeezing occasionally. Eventually, he couldn’t keep up the pretense anymore, and he unwrapped it, carefully setting aside the slightly-damp towel. He pulled his mineral case out of his backpack and began fussing with his collection, to give Jim time.

He had to fuss for what felt like ages but was probably not more than a minute before Jim finally took off his mask.

Toby allowed himself a quick glance at his face – to check how Jim was doing! – ( _don’t stare don’t stare don’t stare_ ). He looked much the same as he had last week, when they’d gone to the car lot to rescue Dr. L and fight Bular, and Jim had had to leave his glamour mask behind. Blue, stony skin all over his face to his neck, where pinkish-grey, more human-looking skin still lingered where no sunburn had accelerated the change. His eyes were still blue, though the whites looked yellowish, and his nose… wasn’t really there anymore. His teeth, in contrast, were more _there_ than before, as in he could see the beginnings of two tusks just peeking over his lip.

His hair looked much better, though. “Did you get a haircut?” That was a social nicety, wasn’t it? If someone got a haircut you were supposed to notice.

“Uh, yeah. My mom…”

Toby nodded as though Jim had expressed a complete thought, and forced himself to look back down at Jim’s hand. The blue color could come from a variety of sources… it didn’t look like sodalite or apatite...

“Oh!” He dove for his backpack. “I almost forgot! I brought snacks!” Toby tossed the bag in question to Jim, who caught it one-handed.

He knew Jim had major hang-ups about eating food in front of other people now, since his diet had turned so strange. Toby hoped his solution would get around that, at least this once.

Jim looked down at the bag of cat kibble. "I, I don't..."

"Then give it here; more for me."

"You don't have to..."

“I told you before, cat food actually tastes good. And it's an excellent source of protein, so gimme.” Could he have brought a human food Jim still enjoyed, like cheese puffs? Sure he could have. But Toby suspected that Jim trying to be more human than he actually was and ignoring the parts of himself that were different wasn't doing him any favors.

Toby pointedly reached over into the bag and popped a piece of kibble into his mouth. Jim tentatively followed suit, constantly glancing back to see Toby’s reaction; Toby just grabbed some more kibble for himself. From the way Jim perked up and went back for more, Toby guessed he was right, cat food would suit his palette. Score!

Toby turned back to examining Jim’s hand (who had to switch to using the hand that was supposed to be soaking to continue to grab bits of kibble. Toby could have thought through his timing a bit better).

Jim’s nails had rough, uneven edges, with bits of human fingernail still clinging to the very margins of some fingers. What kind of stone they were made of would be extremely difficult to identify; there were so many different kinds of black stone in the world, and the crystal structure was a remarkably good approximation of human fingernails, so he couldn’t be sure if they would look the same if they weren’t part of magically-living stone. Maybe in nature, whatever they were made of looked completely different.

Luckily, he didn’t actually need to identify Jim’s fingernails to do what he came to do. “So we’re going to use Mohs Hardness Scale to figure out how to file your nails.” He pulled out a piece of calcite and a piece of feldspar to demonstrate. “When you scratch to two rocks together, only the softer rock is, well, scratched. It might leave some residue on the harder rock, but the harder rock is unharmed.” He passed the two rocks to Jim so he could try it out for himself.

Jim gamely tested it a few times, looking thoughtful. “So how does this help us?”

“Well, you said your usual nail file was a no-go?” at Jim’s nod he elaborated, pulling up the relevant chart in one of his mineral guides. “Stainless steel is typically a 6.5 on the Scale; that gives us a starting point, eliminating anything equal to and below that.”

He went back to picking over his rock collection. Unfortunately, he didn’t have it organized by hardness, and some rocks that might be hard enough were polished smooth and therefore not much use as a nail file.

Toby supposed he _could_ skip ahead to the hardest rock in his collection – which would either work or not – but that would leave the question unanswered of how tough Jim’s nails actually _were_ , and that information could be really useful to have. Like, supposing Jim needed a larger, better piece to act as a nail file than what Toby had in his collection – knowing how hard they’d need it to be gave them _options_ , which was important if you didn’t want to drop several grand on a suitable diamond.

Toby picked up a piece of jasper. Carefully, he pressed it against Jim’s thumbnail and drew it across in a short, straight line. He held his rock up to inspect it – alas, Jim’s nail had scratched it, rather than the other way around.

He repeated the process again with quartz, danburite, and tourmaline, none of which were hard enough to do the job. Fortunately, Jim did not seem to be growing bored with the proceedings. If anything, he was becoming more interested, more animated.

“Hey, I wonder how hard my troll skin is?”

Toby froze, some topaz poised to make the next attempt. “You don’t need to know that.” He completed the motion, and examined Jim’s nail for evidence of success. No luck, damn.

“huh? Why not? Knowing how tough my skin is could be useful in a fight.”

“How so?” Toby challenged. Jim scowled, but Toby wouldn’t budge – he even paused the music to make certain his friend understood how serious he was. “Jim, I’m not going to keep testing your skin until I _succeed_. I’m not going to hurt you, man, and I know you don’t really want to hurt yourself either.”

“That’s not what I – It’s, ugh!” He fisted his hands in his hair. “Seriously, I wasn’t even thinking about scratching myself.” He slowly lowered his hands, and ducked his head, looking down at them. “I know I’ve been… backsliding, a bit, lately. With the, you know, skin-picking. I swear, I’m not trying to hurt myself.”

“Hey, no judgement. This is a judgement-free zone, yes siree.”

Jim flashed him a grateful smile. “I’d been doing so well, but now it’s like every other day is a bad brain day, I just! nrrrhhg!” Jim gnashed his teeth, agitated. He held his hands out, side by side. “It sometimes doesn’t seem like it’s even my skin. What kind of skin is freaking _blue?”_

Toby managed to hold his tongue and avoid saying ‘Blinky does.’ He didn’t know what to say to make Jim feel better – he couldn’t even imagine what Jim was going through. And that frustrated him, because he _always_ had Jim’s back. He watched as Jim rubbed his fingers together with increasing forcefulness, and he thought, maybe…

“Can, can I try something? It might not do anything at all, but…”

Jim nodded, a worn out, nothing-to-lose dip of his head. Once more, Toby reached out and pulled Jim’s hand towards him. This time he held it firmly both of his own, and slowly used the pads of his thumbs to press small circles into the back of Jim’s hand.

“I do this for Nana, sometimes, when her arthritis acts up.” He kept his eyes on his task, working his way up the tendons.

“Mm?” Jim made a small noise of acknowledgement. Toby noticed that his shoulders weren’t as tense as they had been a moment ago – still tense, though.

That was okay. Toby was nothing if not patient. It usually took him twenty minutes to do both of Nana’s hands. After just five, Jim was slumped over, boneless. “s’good. Feel nice.”

“Does it feel like your hand?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good.” Toby was so far out of his depth it wasn’t even funny. He’d started the hand massage as a way to keep Jim’s hand occupied, replace hurtful pressure with healthful, but he had no idea where to go from here. He finished the one hand, working in silence, and began on the other. “What does it feel like? Having stone for skin?” Dammit, he knew if he opened his mouth he’d start babbling. “Nevermind.”

Jim shifted, uncomfortable, but he didn’t withdraw. “It’s like… chewing gum. No, wait, that doesn’t make sense. Like chewing gum in reverse? That’s no better. Okay, so you know when you go to the beach and sand just clings to your skin?” Toby nodded. “It’s not like that at all.”

Toby would have facepalmed except both his hands were occupied. “Jim. It was a stupid question, and I shouldn’t have asked. If you don’t want to answer you don’t have to.”

Jim pulled his hand out of Toby’s hold, staring down as he flexed his fingers. “Touch is… I can still feel things. Not temperature, as much, but… I thought it would be like, like wearing gloves. Or just, not feeling anything at all, like if they real stone. Instead, things feel different. From each other, I mean,” he quickly clarified. “Like, if you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t immediately be able to tell the difference between glass and plastic, would you? By touch alone, without picking it up and handling it?”

“I suppose not.”

Jim nodded. “They feel different, now. Glass sort of – thrums? – more than plastic. I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Huh.” Toby turned that over in his head, putting it together with what he knew about how sand was made into glass, and had an inkling. “Do you think it has something to do with resonance?”

He just shrugged, and Toby let the subject drop. Jim didn’t resist when Toby reached out and picked up his left hand to finish the massage (this time determined not to derail it with intrusive questions, despite the prickling feeling the silence left on his neck). Once again, Jim went limp and relaxed, and when Toby finally let go, he shook his head, blinking like he was coming awake.

“Ready to keep testing rocks?” They were _so close_ to finding the answer, Toby could feel it.

“Once more into the breach!” Jim smiled like he as inviting Toby to share in the joke. Toby did not get the joke. “Because Shakespeare?” he gestured to Toby’s silent phone. “I’ve been focusing on Romeo and Juliet, obviously, but Eli’s got this whole list of expressions that are Actually From Shakespeare? So like, ‘all that glitters is not gold,’ and ‘to thine own self be true,’ and ‘discretion is the better part of valor’ – Shakespeare said a bit differently, but he’s the one who said it. That’s just off the top of my head; there’s a bunch more.”

“Neat!” Toby would freely admit that he knew very little about Shakespeare, despite being something of a closeted musical theater fan. Most of what he knew came from parody – there was a reason he found the song ‘God I Hate Shakespeare’ so relatable. Speaking of…

He pressed ‘play’ to resume the music, and got back to work. This time, they chatted comfortably through the process, a familiar banter, which took them all the way to the finale of Act I, when they finally found a rock that would scratch Jim’s nail, rather than the other way around.

“Congrats!” Toy pronounced grandy. “You’re an 8.5!”

“Great! What finally did it?”

Toby held up the small, nickel-sized rock. “Corundum.”

“Conundrum, like Blinky?”

“Ah, no: co-RUN-dum. It’s a really hard rock – 9 on the scale – which, conveniently, is used in abrasives. Did you know emery is also known as corundite, because it contains a lot of corundum?” oh! - He rooted around in the mani-pedi bag for just a moment. “Aha! See, emery boards are named for the crushed-up emery sand used to make them. Don’t think it will work for you, though – it’s not as hard to as pure conundrum, and some of the synthetic stuff they mix it with to mass produce these boards makes them even weaker. Hard enough for a human nail, but… yeah.”

Jim eyed the emery board and ran it experimentally across one nail. “Yeah. It doesn’t feel as bad as the steel file, but it also doesn’t do anything for my – hold on.” He brought it up to his ~~nose~~ ~~face slits~~ nostrils, and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. "This smells… familiar. Where do I now this smell from?”

Toby shrugged helplessly. Emery boards just smelled like emery boards to him. Suddenly, Jim bolted for the kitchen, and Toby stayed just long enough to make sure nothing got knocked over before he followed.

Inside, Jim was stretching up to reach a high shelf. “I just gave my knives their monthly sharpening last week… here!” He pulled down a rectangular block, maybe half a foot long and a little over two inches wide, and pale blue. “I got this whetstone for Christmas last year; it’s made from corundum, too, I’m pretty sure. Smells the same.”

“Huh. Yeah, that tracks.”

Victorious, they trooped back to the living room with their prize. Then the experimentation began: was it easier to run the whetstone block against Jim’s nails like a giant file, or was it easier for Jim to run his fingers against the stationary whetstone? (it was easier for Jim to run his fingers against the stone).

Which left Toby without much to do, and with all of Act II still to go. He glanced over at all the mani-pedi paraphernalia still spread out – oh, now _there_ was an idea.

He set about examining his own nails while Jim lost himself in the rhythm of filing down his nails a little bit at a time. Toby’s cuticles looked fine, and his nails didn’t need a trim. He could probably get away with skipping straight to the base coat.

Not like it would ultimately matter whether he did a good job or not, since he was always careful to strip away any remnant of polish from his nails before going back to school. He knew not to paint any more of a target on his back.

In fact he’d never painted his nails around anyone but Nana, before. He couldn’t even remember if he’d ever told Jim that it was something he liked to do sometimes.

Still. If Jim could trust him with his troll face, then Toby could trust him with the secret of _Teal the Cows Come Home_. He fished out a bottle of white base coat, then paused as a thought occurred to him. “Hey Jim. If I do my nails, is the smell going to bother you?”

Jim looked up from his filing. Toby resolutely looked completely at ease, totally casual, and ignored the way his heart started to beat double-time. 

But Jim just looked at the bottle in Toby’s hand and considered it. “Huh? Oh, I’m not sure. You could try it and we’ll see?”

Toby, if he was being completely honest with himself, felt a little light-headed with relief at Jim’s non-reaction. “Alright, here we go.” He twisted open the cap and waited for a response.

“It’s certainly strong, but not unpleasant. Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Jim resumed methodically smoothing out his nails, humming a little as he figured out the chorus.

They resumed their sporadic chatting, commenting on the music and getting side-tracked on occasion. Toby meticulously applied the white polish to his left hand, then began to sort through his color options with his right while he waited for them to dry.

Nana liked pastels and bright, sparkly polish; she had one particularly ostentatious pink glitter for when she was feeling particularly playful. Toby gravitated towards jewel tones, though he also had a set of neons that were fun to mix and match.

Today, he was in a purple sort of mood so maybe _Plugged-In Plum_? Yeah, that felt right. He set it aside.

Then, feeling daring, “What about you, Jimbo? Want any color? _Crushin’ on Blue_ would look great with your complexion.”

He wasn’t actually sure if that was strictly speaking true or not; he didn’t buy polish based on what flattered him, but rather what colors caught his eye. He held up the bottle in question against the back of Jim’s hand and thought the colors did, in fact, complement each other nicely.

Jim chewed on his lip, his emerging tusks drawing the eye. “I… maybe? What, uh, what do you have in green?”

Toy felt a thrill run through him at Jim’s agreement. “We don’t have a whole lot of green options, but we do have some!”

In the end, Jim selected _Electronic Santa Claus_ , a bright apple green. It took quite a few base coats before Jim’s nails were ready for color, but they got there eventually.

“Okay, so, same technique as with the white – yes, just like that.” Toby, his own nails long since dry, coached Jim through applying the color himself, as he insisted.

When their nails were all done, and the supplies put away, they moved to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. Well, Jim was preparing dinner; Toby was reading highlights out loud from his Twitter feed.

The sounds of cutting vegetables suddenly stopped, and Toby looked up to see Jim had put the knife down, and was staring down at his hand, fingers spread wide.

“My hand is always going to be a weird color from now on, underneath it all. But… making it weird colors _deliberately_ … That helps. More than I thought it would. Thank you, Tobes. Thank you so much. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Hey hey, it’s a two-way street. I know you’ll always have my back, too.”

_“Always.”_ Jim repeated fervently. He enthusiastically returned the fistbump Toby offered.

Jim was smiling, genuinely smiling, and Toby was happy

**Author's Note:**

> So that scene in Adventures in Trollsitting where Toby makes a big deal out of being in a girl's room has always made be uncomfortable; it leans strongly into the stereotype that teenage boys are captivated by all things girl, and it reinforces the idea that the sexes are inherently foreign to each other, unknowable mysteries. However, I've found a way to reframe that scene so that it works for me. What if what's actually got Toby excited, even if he doesn't consciously realize it, is that something about being in a feminine space really resonates with him. Thus: a gender non-conforming Toby who's stilll at the very beginning of his journey of self-discovery, who hasn't started actively Questioning his gender identity - yet.
> 
> As for Nana's age: regarding her World War One comment I’m going to choose to interpret that as a typo on the part of the writers, who should have written WWII instead of WWI. I will further speculate that Nancy Domzalski was born in Belgium, and was actually quite young when she was acting as a ‘spy’ – specifically, she was born in 1933, was 7 years old when her country surrendered to the Germans. She was 8 years old when she found a pigeon in a cannister in a field, where it had been dropped by Allied planes. Attached were instructions for whoever found the bird to write whatever intelligence they could gather, put it in the tube on the bird’s leg, and release the homing pigeon so it could return to British Intelligence - which was actually quite a risky thing to do; her family would have been killed if they got caught. (For more information I recommend "Operation Columba: The Secret Pigeon Service—The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe," by Gordon Corera.) 
> 
> Lastly, I do not think 'The King and I' is actually Toby's favorite musical - he was just taking the opportunity to quip with Blungo. However, I will choose to interpret it as Toby having an interest in musicals ;D


End file.
